Your personal data, including your precise location, browser history, and even your mouse movements, is being used by some companies to show different prices for the same products—a phenomenon the FTC has dubbed “surveillance pricing.”

According to a new FTC report, retailers are hiring “intermediary firms” to algorithmically tweak and target their prices.

“Instead of a price or promotion being a static feature of a product, the same product could have a different price or promotion based on a variety of inputs—including consumer-related data and their behaviors and preferences, the location, time, and channels by which a consumer buys the product,” the FTC says.

  • lonerangers1@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    walmart rolled this out and call it “dynamic pricing” I have known for half a decade that a VPN can yield me discounts and you get different prices by region for the same product, like an ISP. For the most part it seems simply being unknown provides the desired outcome. I don’t think any part of dynamic or surveillance pricing is designed to ever bring a price down over learning about someone.

  • 7112@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Doesn’t this open up a clear pathway way to discrimination?

    Even AI and data has bias, add that with malicious intent, and what stops a grocer from charging exploited communities higher prices?

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      Look at who’s coming into power tomorrow, and who’s sucking him off the most. This shit is about to get ten times worse.

    • Ulrich@feddit.org
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      8 hours ago

      Companies like Amazon been doing this for a long time. Yes, it’s discriminatory. No one has done anything about it. And they probably won’t for at least another 4 years.

      • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 hours ago

        4 years

        If we’re lucky. And even if we have another president and that president is a Democrat and even if that president has a Democrat super majority in the House and Senate, I am not convinced that they will prioritize breaking up monopolies.

  • frunch@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    “Why pay for more Internet than you need to? Introducing MyPlan! Internet bills are getting out of control these days! And with tariff pricing looming in the near future, we understand how many folks need to curb their spending a bit to make ends meet. MyPlan only charges you for the Internet you use–and not for all that extra bandwidth you’re wasting month after month. Call one of our service representatives today!”

    • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      A plan like this would actually work if it were capped at the same price as an unlimited plan.

      It never is though. Once I was lucky enough to exploit 1TB from a $70/month 5GB plan back in the days that my ISP didn’t offer anything competitive. I ran that hustle for years.

    • BigBrainBrett2517@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Sadly, I think the flat rate (which is inevitable) would be way more than what we want to pay. Then paying for the internet we use… So frickin expensive 😔 Great idea otherwise. It’d be awesome. We never use what we’re paying for… But it’s the minimum.

  • dbkblk@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Why don’t Americans put pressure on legislation like Europeans did with the GDPR?

    • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Because, for the last four or five decades, the wealthy in America have used assorted media to foment never ending religious, economic, and racial culture wars between different elements of the middle and lower classes. That constant state of conflict keeps the American people from ever being able to unite and accomplish anything at all.

    • dwindling7373@feddit.it
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      1 hour ago

      For the same reason the EU is doing anything at all: those companies are american.

      You can bet your ass if those were europeans you would see the opposite happening. See: tiktok.

      • dbkblk@lemmy.world
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        45 minutes ago

        I don’t think so. The reverse is even happening as there are way more restrictions inside Europe for Europeans companies. The result is that they are less competitive, but more respectful for EU citizens (but unfortunately, outside companies don’t always have to respect this, for now).

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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      3 hours ago

      Americans in aggregate simply don’t care. They don’t understand this, won’t take the time to understand it, and don’t care enough to understand.

      • atrielienz@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        Americans care but they’re bad at organizing. Significantly so. They fight amongst themselves and get caught up in drama. They spread misinformation and don’t like facts that conflict with what they believe is right. So these kinds of movements stagnate unless someone with a specific type of charisma gives them a direction to follow.

        • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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          2 hours ago

          The sheep needs a good daddy shepherd the issue isn’t we haven’t had a good daddy and the last we had got killed by the ruling class.

          So we haven’t had a a pedom friendly daddy since then. He won’t ever happen again IMHO

          Only viable option is decentralized direct action and hope others act in the same to create pressure on the money changers

    • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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      7 hours ago

      Because they work three jobs to get food on their table and have to remortgage their house to pay for an ambulance. Privacy is a first-world problem and the US is a third-world country.

  • Amoxtli@thelemmy.club
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    4 hours ago

    Prices are not static. Learn basic economics. Poor people paying poor prices is not bad thing.

    • Pretzilla@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Ya got that backwards. The Poor Pay More is a real thing and a documentary movie title if you’d like to enlighten yourself.

  • Luckiesock@lemm.ee
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    9 hours ago

    Still ain’t buying their shit. I grow veggies and buy from Chinese market.